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Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Reader Submitted: Relaying in Real Life and Virtual Life

By Bain Finch

My
first Relay was in SL 2011. In 2012 I helped bring Relay to IWz. In
2014 I join my local real life Relay group, and been involved with all 3
groups, every year, since. This year, I've pulled back some, and will be
the first year, I will not hold any planning group role.

For
the most part, both RL and VR Relay are exactly the same. We joke about
no bugs, weather, parking, but we do have lag, and we do have sim
crossing parties. For the uninitiated, lag is just want it sounds like,
so many people are on one sim (server) the system can't keep up. Sim
crossing parties slightly different beast. Each sim is a different
server, so when moving from sim to sim, your avatar and all you are
wearing, needs to be handed off to that new server. When that fails,
people pile up at the sim boarder, trying to enter, hence, sim crossing
parties.

But you want to know something, the challenge of keep
walking the track and dealing with lag and sim crossing issues, pretty
much equals the challenges of dealing with weather, and temperatures,
while walking, all night long.

The one thing VR Relay has over
RL is our campsites builds. Most campsites are season themed, reflecting
the Team's reason for Relaying, filled with advocacy information about
cancer, health choices, mission messages and more. The biggest
uniqueness for Relay on virtual grids is ability to communicate locally,
within groups, group notices with tie-ins to social media, blogs and
more, right across the whole grid, with the same abilities of using the
fundraising dashboard, is virtual Relay's greatest strength. Virtual
Relay transforms ones advocacy's signage, into a portals, able to span
the world, free of language barriers.

The one marked difference,
from the virtual Relay I noticed, was during and following lighting of
the Luminaria. Wasn't until my second RL Relay, that I noticed it. Once
the Luminaria are lit, the track begins to stratify and have distinct
lanes. The outside lanes are for the runners. The middle lanes are for
the walkers. But that inside lane, next to the Luminaria, that for the
Luminaria shufflers. Moving one step at time, reading each and every
Luminaria as they go. Silently advancing, bit by bit, read, step
forward, reading the outpouring of love, all mindful of each other,
while the walkers are pacing their laps, further out. After a bit, I
find myself on that divide between the Luminaria shuffle lanes and the
walkers coming at me, just looking at all their faces. Right there, I
could see it in their eyes, that quiet, unspoken connection of the
heart.

In the wee hours of that night, when I found myself
sheltering from the cold and light rain, alone with my thoughts, I found
my thoughts bouncing back and forth between all my Relay experiences,
that I now realize, Relay's greatest strength is it's sense of community
it creates, it's sense of belonging. As an individual, I can build a
house. But get a bunch of folks together, and we can move mountains,
build a pyramid or a coliseum in short order. Together, we can help each
other, each doing our part, all adding together, all the while,
reaching our goals.

Lite one candle, you push back the darkness on a space, lite a bunch of candles, you brighten up the whole night.